A characteristic common to all known types of productive low-resistivity reservoirs is their capacity to produce virtually water-free oil and/or gas even though log-derived water saturations based upon the formation factor and resistivity index equations, set forth by G. E. Archie in "The Electrical Resistivity Log As An Aid In Determining Some Reservoir Characteristics," Trans. AIME, No. 146, pp. 54-62, 1942, may be greatly in excess of fifty percent. These productive low-resistivity formations can be explained in terms of a conductive free-fluid pore network and a conductive rock matrix. The problem is that the Archie formation factor, resistivity index, and related equations, which have been the bases for quantitative electric log analysis for more than forty years, assume conductance only through the pore fluid network. These empirically derived equations relate electrical conduction to porosity and water saturation and have been so useful in the analysis of clean formations that they are often referred to as "Archie's Laws."
The Archie equations are strictly applicable to the analysis of clean formations, formations with a matrix or framework that is so nearly an insulator that total electrical conductance is determined by conduction through the tortuous paths of the pore water. Not many "clean formations" exist in nature, and by the early 1950's log anaysts recognized that a strict application of the Archie equations to the analysis of shaly formations produced a higher-than-actual water saturation. How to correct for the added electrical conductance due to clay minerals is, to the log analyst, "the shaly-sand problem."
However, clay minerals are not the only minerals that can add to the total conductance of a rock. Minerals, such as pyrite, magnetite, graphite-like organic matter, and capillary bound irreducible water, can contribute and even dominate electrical conductance in a rock. If this conductance is not properly included in electric log analysis, producible oil can be mistaken for water.
Since Archie (1942) introduced the foundation concepts for quantitative electric log analysis, many modifications to the Archie model have been proposed to better describe the observed electrical properties of fluid-filled rocks. As illustrated by three recent models, the Waxman-Smits model (M. H. Waxman and L. J. M. Smits, "Electrical Conductivities in Oil-Bearing Shaly Sands", Soc. Petr. Eng. J., (Trans. v. 243), pp. 107-122, 1968), a dual-water model (C. Clavier, G. R. Coates and J. Dumanoir, "The Theoretical and Experimental Bases for the `Dual Water Model` for the Interpretation of Shaly Sands", 52nd Annual Fall Technical Conference and Exhibition of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, Denver, Paper SPE 6589, 1977) and a dual-porosity model (J. Raiga-Clemenceau, C. Fraisse and Y. Grosjean, "The Dual-Porosity Model, A Newly Developed Interpretation Method For Shaly Sands", SPWLA 25th Annual Logging Symposium, New Orleans, Paper F, 1984), the primary effort has been to modify the Archie formation factor to include specific mechanisms that would make a rock more conductive. When a number of different and valid mechanisms exist, an inherent weakness of any model based upon a specific mechanism is that it will be limited in its application.